Chris Dodd for President

Today's Washington Post has a detailed and disturbing article about the process the Bush administration is going through to distort data coming out of Iraq in order to present a rosier picture for the American public and US Congress entering this month's debate on war funding.

Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

Now, there's no doubt that there are different sorts of violence in Iraq. But funneling reporting of combat or sectarian deaths into a criminal data merely by making the blanket assumption that getting shot in the front of the head is a criminal attack (or to put it another way, the only time people get shot in the front of the head is by criminals), speaks to a deliberate policy of providing a false account of what sort of violence is taking place in Iraq.

"Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."

This goes hand in hand with previously documented data editing policies that include not counting car bombs as attacks either. Violence has consistently been defined down to present the best situation possible, regardless of what the actual conditions in Iraq are.

The White House, General Petraeus, and Ambassador Crocker will report on the levels of violence in Iraq, but not count people getting shot in the head, car bombs, Sunni on Sunni attacks, and Shia on Shia attacks as violence. It's dishonest and it will serve to prolong the war, cost more Americans their lives, and cost more Iraqis theirs as well.

But most of the administration's case will rest on security data, according to military, intelligence and diplomatic officials who would not speak on the record before the Petraeus-Crocker testimony. [Emphasis added]

We already know that the data is inaccurate and incomplete. We also know that the Bush administration is selectively citing the data to present the most positive picture possible of the level of violence in Iraq. This bears striking similarity to the Bush administration's well-documented politicization of the Government Accountability Office report on political progress in Iraq -- the Bush administration edited the final version to show a greater increase of political progress by the Iraqi government over the assessment provided by the non-partisan GAO. The Bush administration has made a concerted, multi-pronged effort to create an image of Iraq for the American public - and the US Congress - to see that has no relationship to the actual facts on the ground.

The stated reason for escalating the war and sending over 30,000 more American troops into Iraq was to stabilize the violence to allow for political progress. There has not been political progress in Iraq. Violence, particularly violence against American troops, has risen over the course of the surge. We are about to finish our bloodiest summer in Iraq.

And yet the Bush administration wants us to think that conditions in Iraq are improving, so we must keep our troops longer to allow the situation to further improve until...some other point in time comes when we'll be told that progress continues to necessitate keeping our troops in Iraq in perpetuity.

Never mind that more American troops are dying than last year or the year before or the year before and despite their sacrifices, political progress is not being made.

Never mind that if the Bush administration were honest and admitted that we're not making progress towards securing Iraq, they would still use the decline in the situation on the ground as justification for continuing to keep our troops there at the current levels. The Bush administration logic on peddling our continued presence in Iraq to the American public remains "Heads I win, Tails you lose."

This is not an honest account of the state of the war to the American people. It will only prolong George Bush's war at the expense of our military and our treasury.

During the question and answer session following the IAFF endorsement of Chris Dodd for President, Dodd was asked about what his thoughts were on the reports that President Bush will ask Congress for an additional $50 billion in the upcoming supplemental funding bill on Iraq.

My transcript:

Reporter: "Senator, there were reports this morning that President Bush will ask Congress for $50 billion more dollars for the Iraq war. What do you have to say about that?

Dodd: "Well, I'm not surprised and I'd be very resistant to that request. I think we've, as I said we're spending well over now half a trillion dollars in this conflict. And again, it's a civil war in Iraq. This is the middle of a civil war and those who have understood this issue have argued from the very beginning that there was never going to be a military solution to the civil war in Iraq. And so I'd be very resistant and I intend to fight any efforts here, I'll do whatever I can to support whatever our troops need to have a safe and secure withdrawal from Iraq. But I don't intend to continue to fund the war over there that I think has no end. As long as we're there, I think the Iraqis are not going to come together as a people. It's about time we wound down our military presence there."

I was very happy to get to talk to Bob Geiger, a blogger who focuses his extensive efforts on covering the US Senate, about Senator Dodd's campaign. Geiger shares his thoughts about Senator Dodd's leadership to restore habeas corpus and end the Iraq War in the video clip below.

Yesterday's violence in Iraq may well mark another downward turn in the civil war that our troops are currently caught in. The Askariya Shrine in Samarra - whose gold dome was destroyed over a year ago, marking a previous rise in sectarian violence - was attacked and its two minarets were destroyed (see side-by-side pictures of the Shrine courtesy of the New York Times). Sadly, the bombing is already increasing the level of violence in Iraq and decreasing any chance for the Iraqi parliament to make progress towards the political benchmarks that have already been set for them. Confusing as it may be, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow thinks a further descent into violence and chaos in the Iraqi civil war is actually a sign of American success:

It does fit a pattern that we see throughout the region, which is that when you see things moving towards success, or when you see signs of success, that there are acts of violence.

Were it that we were so lucky as to have violence be a sign of success and not failure. Unfortunately the surge has not worked - violence in Iraq has actually risen since the Bush administration initiated an escalation of America's presence in Iraq this winter. A Congressional study was just released documenting this rise in violence. And thus, contrary to what Mr. Snow would like us to believe, yesterday's violence, like the violence of the day before it and the day before that, is only a sign of the absence of a workable plan in Iraq. The White House needs to be honest with the American public. This sort of lipstick-on-a-pig rhetoric does a disservice to the American people and the troops serving in harms way in Iraq. It's time for America to recognize that the surge of troops has not worked. What we need now, to borrow Senator Dodd's words, is a clear plan for Iraq that includes an enforceable deadline for responsibly redeploying America's troops out of Iraq. In April Senator Dodd said:

It is time to bring an end to a war that at every turn has failed to make America safer. The hour is late. It is time to begin putting our country on a more secure path. The moment has arrived for leadership that stands up and announces without equivocation that prolonging this war will not make us more secure – ending it will.

The best way to end the Iraq war is to pass the Dodd Amendment onto the Defense Authorization Bill. The Amendment will start responsibly redeploying our combat troops from Iraq immediately and complete the process by the end of March 2008, using the Congressional power of the purse to ensure that our troops are brought home to the heros welcome they deserve. The Dodd Amendment will also require the Bush administration to report to Congress on the progress of the redeployment and make funding for the Iraq war contingent on the progress of the drawdown of forces. America needs leaders with conviction to put our country on a more secure path. The time for denial and misrepresentation has long passed. Senator Dodd is offering bold leadership on the most important issue facing America today. It's time for us to stand up with him.

Senator Dodd issued the following statement today on the news that Admiral Michael Mullen has been nominated to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

While I have deep respect for Admiral Mullen's distinguished service, his view that this is a 'generational war' will not do anything to change course in Iraq. If we want to bring an end to our involvement in this civil war, we must do more than simply replace personnel -- we must replace President Bush's failed policy. Today's move underscores the need for Congress to speak with clarity and adopt a firm, enforceable deadline for the redeployment of combat troops out of Iraq.

Admiral Mullen has previously said that the Iraq War "is going to go on for a long time. It’s a generational war.”